What's cooking? part 4

bowties creep me out so I try to avoid it
(well and the whole dude it's attached to creeps me out in general)

http://www.gpb.org/files/national/americas_test_kitchen.jpg

There's a podcast of some recipes plus kitchen tips and appliance reviews. I quite like it although it doesn't give the measurements of the ingreds, I guess in an attempt to force you to pay for that info. But for everything except baking, you can approximate the measurements from what you see in their bowls and spoons.

MS Public Broadcasting offers Create TV as a broadcast-only channel (no cable or satellite) but I haven't figured out how much hassle or expense it would be to set up the antenna to get it. Anyway, it has a few cooking shows I'd like to see like America's Test Kitchen and Ming Tsai's show.

P much anything they've ever done you can find by googling "[recipe bane] cooks illustrated"

America's Test Kitchen is pretty decent as a cooking show. I should figure out when PBS shows it locally and start watching again. Last I saw, they showed it back-to-back with Rick Bayless's cooking show, with he and his daughter having a bizarre almost-flirty dynamic.

i watch create a lot at my parents' house. some of those shows are soooooo bad. like the red-haired vegan lady (not sure what this is called) and katie brown workshop. there was a scandinavian cooking show on at xmas. they also have jacques pepin on half the shows, i like that.

Oh man if the red haired vegan lady is who I think you mean that's the worst cooking show ever. And Bayless def. gives of a weird creepy vibe that my wife has dubbed "yoga sleazy".

On the other hand I never will tire of Jacques Pepin.

lol @ "yoga sleazy," I know exactly what you mean

Who is red haired vegan lady?

http://www.christinacooks.com/
she wants to help you cook for your guy, she says things like that a lot. your guy will love this.

I had a feeling it'd be her; she's from Philly and I heard she had a cooking show though I didn't know on what channel. She comes into my store sometimes and is quite nice and also huge into macrobiotics (apparently in the early 90s she was the first to teach macro cooking classes targeted toward gay men to control HIV/AIDS w/o medication)

I'm making polenta today, with some vegetables and a cream sauce.

Shakshuka round 2, this time with more hot peppers. I think the other key is REALLY GOOD feta, not the bland mass-market feta I used the first time around to less-than-amazing results.

ooh i like french feta the best
so grassy!

Oh and Christina Cooks is hilarious; often she has some dude with a guitar singing ridiculous songs right there in the kitchen.

I love Jacques Pepin with all of my heart and soul!!!

xpost LL that's the kind I got this time!

I am a total feta newbie; I just bought Whole Foods' 365 brand crumbled feta for $2.79

:(

i always get the whole foods big block of feta

It wasn't bad! I used to think I didn't like feta but I don't mind it in certain contexts but I'm waaaaayy too newbish to be discerning.

I like feta that has real bite and *character*. You don't have to use very much when it is good!

My kitchen had a ceiling failure and until I get a new kitchen I have to cook on the cheap. :{

But I made an easy gnocchi dish that I am addicted to: one package of gnocchi, one cup of peas, and one can of cream of mushroom soup. Add salt to taste.

I am really into making curd. I've been reading a lot of different recipes and the sugar/juice/butter ratios vary so wildly! If you add too much butter it's still good but it'll just taste like lemon bars (r.i.p. grapefruit ginger curd). There was a very excellent article I read a few months ago that was v scientific and talked about all the different ingredients and what they did and whole egg vs yolk and etc but I spent 2h looking for it last night and I can't find it ;_;

My department is having an Olympics-themed buffet tomorrow with food from various participating nations. My latent Trini pride has just forced me to spend two and a half hours making aloo curry, buss-up-shut and tomato choka. I have no idea how my aunts do it every day. It turned out wonderfully, although i'm not sure how it'll stand up to the office microwave tomorrow.

please post recipes! I have never made any of those things, but I swear I will!

Reposted from the tacos vs. burritos thread, where I accidentally put it:

what should I do with like 8 fresh apricots

― quincie, Wednesday, July 25, 2012 8:57 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Save 2-3 for eating fresh, turn 5-6 into an ice cream topping?

― Neil Jung (WmC), Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:01 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

trade them for tacos

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:02 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no ice cream in the house, and even if there were, I am not much of an ice cream person why because apparently I hate america

anyhoo I really like this recipe, so I think I'll do it up with apricots instead of rhubarb/strawberry:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Rhubarb-Strawberry-Pudding-Cake-238103

question: do I have to peel these fuckers god I hope not

xpost oh hell I thought I was on What's Cooking thread; apologies

― quincie, Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tldr; basically my question is do I have to peel fresh apricots before quartering them and baking them with batter containing a ton of butter?

I just scored a delicious, huge, apricot tart OH SORRY I MEAN 'tarte aux abricots' from Marks & Spencers for 50p. Some jealous losers were admiring it (& the reduced sticker) in the checkout queue.

b-b-but were the apricots in that tarte peeled or non?

First few recipes I see after googling say don't peel.

made this hot and sour prawn salad on monday, it was so good, and even better after a day in the fridge.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hot_and_sour_prawn_64962

thanks WmC, tbh even if I was supposed to peel I probably would have said to hell with it anyway

pretty sure you don't peel - apricot skin is v v v thin and delicate, barely a skin at all.

the apricots are caramelised - I can't really tell! I think they probably are peeled?

Here's my recipe for what I've had for dinner the past two days - it's an attempt to copy what I used to get for lunch from Mixt Greens.
- butter lettuce
- cherry tomatoes
- chopped cucumber (british kind I guess)
- thin chopped slices of red onion
- avocado
- mango thinly sliced
- crushed macadamia nuts
Mix up in a bowl with either some lime juice & mango dressing or attempt to make your own from mango, lime juice, yoghurt, oil, something like that.
- tuna steak, rubbed with oil & ground coriander & salt & pepper, seared on hot heat then sliced. Put the salad on plates then the tuna on top with MOAR macadamias.
Sounds kind of not that exciting but really it is amazing!

got a banana bread cooling on a wire rack, counting the minutes until it might be cool enough to eat. I never bake so I am excited but resigned to the possibility that it may be largely inedible

(drums fingers, vibrates with anticipation)

Turned out pretty well, at least given my fear of baking! I used this recipe should anyone care: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_bread/

Bone-in pork shoulder currently a couple of hours in to smoking. Spouse was in charge of the rub, which was tasty upon sampling; now my job is to keep him from over-doing the hickory smoke (he thinks there is no such thing as too much smoke; he is wrong).

Thinking about making blueberry ice cream if I can pull it off without a trip to the store for ingredients. Have never tried to make ice cream with less-than-whole milk and cream, but maybe some extra egg yolk in the custard will compensate?

OK I'm gonna try this Mark Bittman cornstarch-thickened ice cream recipe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/dining/011mrex.html

someone gifted me some squash blossoms the other day. did a scallop mousseline (pureed the hell out of bay scallops, added 1/2 egg white, dash cream, tarragon salt and white pepper) and piped into blossoms. steamed for ~4 minutes and it was really nice. neighbor friend inhaled a couple too.
even though it's frigid in sf this morning i'm jonesing and will get fixins for vietnamese spring rolls w/nuoc chom here in a bit.
i absolutely lurve those little salady things

that scallop thing sounds amazing!

hey ILC, here is a real good sandwich i make sometimes:

it's avocado, adzuki bean & aubergine. the adzuks are smushed into kind of a paste, so they can be spread on one of the pieces of bread (i throw in a little cumin and nutmeg, but that is hardly noticeable, really). the aubergines are thinly sliced & grilled, w/a little smoked paprika. two of them is super filling (this bread's pretty small, but it makes a really neat, tall, colourful sandwich). depending on how into sweating yr aubs you are, it takes like twenty minutes or so to make. pro-tip: once you've grilled the aubergines, half them again, otherwise they're one of those sandwich ingredients that you bite into & disassemble your sandwich by dragging out with your teeth.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8428/sandwichc.jpg

xxpost: re: the scallop thing - that probably isn't my favorite way to prepare what are my favorite seafood, but it is a classic French preparation and i'm glad chef @ work gave me the idea to try it. was elegant and really simple to make. might try stuffing with mint/egg/ricotta and frying if those blossoms are still forgotten about and in the walk-in when i get to work on Monday.

that's a interesting sammie idea schlump. never really thought of combining avo and eggplant together, and don't think i've ever had adzukis....

adzuki beans are great! really flavoursome but they're also kind of apart from other beans consistency-wise, less starchy/chalky, so good for doing weird stuff with/refrying/puréeing, &c.

(they are kind of a motherfucker to soak & cook, btw, so they're easier out of a tin imo)

ok just realized mochi with red bean paste is adzukis so i've had that many times but never a savory adzuki. thx for the headsup

black beans and rice
fried ripe plantains
so satisfying!

^ classic

oh man I can't find canned black beans here. Is it a pain to buy dried and soak them and do they taste the same?

Takes some time, but not a pain. They taste better than canned, imo.

it's much better! i don't use canned black beans anymore because they are too mushy and do not taste very pleasant to me. if you cook them yourself you can throw in some epazote, which is supposed to aid digestion. (it's the main ingred in beano iirc?)